Comprehensive Projection of World Oil Exports 490
Prof. Goose writes, "This article is a comprehensive assessment of world oil exports, defined has the total amount of liquid hydrocarbons that are surpluses in producing countries. This assessment is made by projecting into the future fixed change rates that reflect current trends in liquids production and consumption in all countries where presently the difference between the two factors is positive. The outcome of this assessment is rather worrisome." Here is the money graph through 2020.
There's plenty of Oil and the Economy is just fine (Score:5, Funny)
Until after the elections, that is.
No, we're running out!! (Score:2)
Re:No, we're running out!! (Score:5, Funny)
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Your implication is that the stone age ended because we found something better than stones to switch to. Perhaps so, but it raises the question, what is there that is 'better than oil' (read: cheaper, more convenient, less polluting) that we will switch to this time? Other than a breakthrough in nuclear fusion, I don't see another energy source that can easily scale to fill oil's shoes yet... which su
Re:No, we're running out!! (Score:5, Insightful)
Your "insightful" comment betrays a lack of economic understanding. There will be no discontinuity, no moment in the future when we run out of oil and everything grinds to a halt.
We will never run out of oil.
As supply decreases, the price will increase, and at some point something else will reach the cost/benefit ratio of oil. Rising prices will speed that along.
But even giving you the benefit of "as supply decreases" is not borne out by history. Enviro-types have been telling us for decades that supply is dwindling, yet it increases every year.
So on balance, I have no trouble with society using as much oil as it's worth for us to pay for.
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Those who do follow daily developments in conventional oil tend to be more pessimistic - there was a month late last year that we still havn't surpassed in production. They generally wholly reject OPEC's paper recoverable reserves war of the '80's (wherein OPEC one by one doubled thei
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Re:No, we're running out!! (Score:4, Insightful)
Re:There's plenty of Oil and the Economy is just f (Score:4, Funny)
Only a terrorist or a commie pinko would think of energy usage as a cost, something to be balanced and minimized!
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Worrisome? (Score:5, Insightful)
Probably because it's easier than predicting how technological innovation and the ebb and flow of the global economy will totally change the entire equation long before these simplistic predictions ever come due.
Including "innovation" is dangerous. (Score:5, Insightful)
The point of these predictions, IMO, is to show us what will happen if we just keep bumbling along, doing what we're currently doing.
If you assume that we'll start using more efficient cars in the future, and take that into consideration when making your graph/paper/prediction/whatever, then it might make the looming crisis look less severe, meaning that people won't actually start using more efficient cars
It's a self-defeating prophesy: if you make it look like we're going to do better than we're currently on target to do, taking no corrective action, then you encourage us to not take any.
Re:Including "innovation" is dangerous. (Score:5, Insightful)
So then, the best thing to do is exagerate how bad things are to force people to do what some think needs to be done?
Perhaps exagerated consequences ( which don't materialize ) tend to discredit the suggested action, no matter how valid?
Re:Including "innovation" is dangerous. (Score:5, Interesting)
First off, all of the predictions that we see in the article are from Colin Campbell. He's a geologist who represents the fringe of the "peak oil" movement, and founded the association for the study of peak oil and gas. The guy has trouble being right. In addition to being continually proven wrong about the discovery of large new oil fields (which keep turning up -- not to mention old fields unexpectedly finding new life) and the rates at which existing fields will produce, every few years he pushes back his predicted peak. First it was 1995. It's all the way back to 2007 now. Aaany day now, Colin!
Secondly, the logic that this article is based on is faulty. It fails to acknowledge the most critical factor in oil production and pricing: the price of oil influences both the demand and the rate of production of fuels (inc. alternatives). The more expensive oil gets, the slower world economic growth occurs, which drastically reduces demand. At the same time, the more expensive oil gets, vast new reserves come online. At current oil prices, Saudi Arabia doesn't have the world's largest reserves: Venezuela does. Venezuela's reserves were once dwarfed by Saudi Arabia's because they're more expensive to produce from. With high prices, a vast amount of Venezuelan oil comes online.
But it doesn't stop there. Current prices are high enough to make Canadian tar sands profitable. Shell is leading the way here, and is majorly scaling up their operations. If you count the tar sands, Canada goes up into the world leader position. But hey, why stop there? Coal liquifaction is borderline profitable at current prices. The US has hundreds of years of coal to mine; even if we start converting it to oil, it's a massive energy influx. And do we really even need to get into oil shale, methane hydrates, ethanol (esp. from cellulose), biodiesel, waste polymerization, and vehicles driven by electricity or hydrogen (which, effectively, can be powered by the grid, which means that any potential power source will work).
Yes, prices will rise. So? We've gotten a free ride on ubercheap oil for too long. At current prices, however, countless technologies are either freshly viable or near-viable for energy production -- both for producing petroleum, and for producing petroleum alternatives. If prices rise further, it makes them all the prettier for investors. This peak oil fearmongering is just silly.
Re:Including "innovation" is dangerous. (Score:5, Interesting)
Wait a minute! Let me see if I can boil this down...
When a something is in high demand and becomes scarce it becomes more expensive. Because it is more expensive, people will seek out and develop alternative sources for the product, as well as alternative products.
Is this just crazy talk? Are you saying that we didn't go back to candles when we ran out of whale oil? But instead we developed an alternative - petroleum? Or that when since cane sugar is expensive we sweeten lots of food products with corn syrup?
Holy freshman year economics, Batman!
Someone better tell these simple proven facts to the prophets of doom. I'm sure that they'd rather have a hand in informing the public of all this, rather than exploit the public with their gloomy predictions for personal gain.
Re:Including "innovation" is dangerous. (Score:5, Insightful)
Yep we'll have to do that, since absolutely nothing out there consuming oil will reach the end of its useful life in 20 years and would be up for replacement anyway. Also none of the alternatives like extracting oil from tar sands, from deep water wells, or producing oil from coal could feasibly be used in any equipment currently in use. All those people currently driving around in biodiesel fueled cars are just imagining that they are using a petroleum alternative. And while people are willing to spend $30,000 on a new car, spending $30,035 on a flex-fuel vehicle capable of also running on E85 will put the world economy into a tailspin.
Let's assume, however, that we don't find new reserves, we don't find ways to more efficiently recover our current reserves, and that tar sands and the like don't pay off in a big way.
We could easily do a 70-80% replacement of petroleum as a motor fuel source in only 10 years based n bio-fuels like ethanol and bio-diesel. Big consumers like oil fired power plants can be refueled fairly easily for coal. They're big, but there are relatively few of them so they are easy to do. And you only need to replace a few pieces, the boilers and turbines and generators continue to operate as before. What you are left with is the medium sized plants. Large diesel generators at industrial plants, railroad locomotives, things with 40 year lifespans but are too numerous to convert easily. After removing the motor fuels and big power plants from the equation, however, you've halved the demand for oil, which means that you now hav 40 years to update this infrastructure. And as the updating procedes, it pushes back the date when we run out of oil.
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USA centric figures:
Easily? So how much bio-diesel can you get from an acre of land? Well, if all the vegetable oil you used was post-consumer, oil from deep fat fryers and the like, you could replace about 15% of the required diesel, or about 3% of our total energy needs for transportation.
If you converted every arable acre of land to oil production, rape seed (canola
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Exactly.
I expect that we'll see a long term trend of gradual price increases. As the prices goes up, it will spur investment in alternative sources - as we've already been seeing - as well as an increase in conservation - as we've already been
Re:Including "innovation" is dangerous. (Score:5, Informative)
Gasoline consumed by United States annually: 140 billion gallons
Average energy of gasoline: 114,000 btu per gallon
Annual energy from gasoline in the United States: 16.0 E+15 btu
Average energy from ethanol: 76,100 btu per gallon
Volume of ethanol required to meet gasoline energy needs: 210 billion gallons
Volume of ethanol per bushel of corn: 2.7 gallons
Volume of corn required to replace gasoline use: 78 billion bushels
Volume of corn per area of farmland: 150 bushels per acre
Volume of ethanol per area of farmland: 410 gallons per acre
Area required to replace gasoline use: 520 million acres, or 2.1 million km^2
Total land area of United States: 9,161,000 km^2
Fraction of land required to meet gasoline energy needs: 23%
That fraction declines with other, more efficient stocks, but there are sometimes other expenses involved depending on the particular crop. Corn is the most widely-known and -used input, but sugarcane and sugarbeets are also possible. Switchgrass can reportedly yield as much as 1200 gallons per acre (though the energy efficiency is debated) and would thus significantly reduce the area required, but 8% of the country is still almost the size of North and South Dakotas, Nebraska, and Kansas combined.
To put this in further perspective, according to the CIA World Factbook, the total arable land for the United States is about 18%, so even with switchgrass, nearly half of the arable land would be devoted to fuel use, putting a massive dent in the ability of this nation to feed itself.
This is for straight ethanol use with no gasoline, but E85 barely dulls the edge of that blade.
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Agreed, and there are now more players involved, some of them with billions to spend. There is some promise of improvement, but there are questions as to how efficient the overall processes will be, especially with cellulosic conversion. Many pin their hopes on that process, but so far it's extremely inefficient.
Second, that 19% is the amount of land actually under active cultivation, not
Problem is production rate (Score:3, Informative)
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Unfortunately, none of the alternatives you named are really all that desirable. Coal to gas conversion is very environmentally destructive-- and, of course, it contributes even more to global warming. All of the heavy oil products require even more energy to refine than light oil, which translates into massive inefficiency. Unfortunately, that is the future.
Ethanol-powered vehicle
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You're saying that instead of reporting openly and honestly, to the best of their current knowledge and ability...
Instead of saying what is true, you want scientists to say what is fal
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Your typical private sector scientist isn't going to publish a whole lot that doesn't go through a marketing department first, and your typical public sector one is in a similar position apart from the fact that various other words are substituted for 'marketing'.
A close look at the graphs and charts used in the presentation usually gives away a bias toward one thing or another. You also have to consider the data the report was based on,
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That's not what I read his post as saying at all. In fact it seems quite the opposite. He is argueing they should only use thier best current knowledge and ability, not try to guess at what "some future innovation" might help of when.
Besides all that, doesn't this study already consider future innovation
Re:Including "innovation" is dangerous. (Score:5, Insightful)
As economist Herb Stein observed, "If something can't go on forever, it won't."
There's a price at which conservation makes sense (which varies from person-to-person, and there's different prices for different degrees of conservation). There's a price at which extracting oil from tar sands makes sense. There's a price at which synthesis of oil from coal makes sense. There may be a price at which ethanol makes sense (I've heard conflicting reports over whether ethanol from corn is energy-profitable). There's a price at which electric cars (powered by fission, or from solar power) make sense.
There's billions of dollars to be made by guessing right about when and whether these price points will be hit, so investors are going to put a lot of effort into making intelligent guesses and acting on them at the appropriate times.
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so investors are going to put a lot of effort into making sure the government chooses things that make their investments pay off even up to the point of creating false data to support their investments.
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Re:Including "innovation" is dangerous. (Score:5, Insightful)
However, what the recent events have shown us is that regardless of the sources, the relatively inelastic demand for oil can produce major price shocks with huge detriments to the economy. So even if there's plenty of potential oil, it's not good for us to be so dependent on it.
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Or maybe technology will get us out of this, but by taking us in a different direction for our energy needs, something other than oil.
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See how much harder it is, to make realistic predictions about the future, instead of just assuming current trends will continue indefinitely?
Re:Worrisome? (Score:5, Informative)
This assessment uses as data sources the Statistical Review of World Energy, published yearly by BP, and the monthly newsletter published by ASPO, where assessments for future oil production are available for more than 40 individual countries.
Now, why would a site that seems to be focused on a scarce energy outlook use these two sources? Probably because BP and the ASPO both have huge energy holdings. Their reports will show that energy is going to be more valuable in the future. The only way for it to be more valuable is if it is scarcer.
The real question is, why didn't they use data from the IEA [iea.org] or EIA [doe.gov]? (I know, very similar letters)
The EIA suggests cheaper energy prices long term and a probable energy glut short term because we've had unreasonably high oil prices (high prices means that you drill for more oil... but our consumption has been basically flat = too much oil!) and the IEA is more moderate.
Not saying that this slam dunk bullshit but you have to question the source.
I know everyone loves the "running out of oil" story, but if that were true then why is oil barely above $60 when we have 2 huge suppliers threatening to cut back production, and North Korean bomb tests? If we were really running out of oil and some people threatened to cut us off plus some negative diplomatic news, we would be over 100 easily.
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The EIA suggests cheaper energy prices long term and a probable energy glut short term because we've had unreasonably high oil prices (high prices means that you drill for more oil... but our consumption has been basically flat = too much oil!) and the IEA is more moderate.
I agree. The other thing that high oil prices do is make innovation look more financially attractive. Oil exporting co
Re:Worrisome? (Score:4, Interesting)
Getting away from a petroleum economy is a process that will take years, not a few weeks. In order to use non-petroleum fuels, you need 1) production, 2) delivery infrastructure and 3) consumption structure (i.e. ethanol cars, hydrogen home water-heaters).
Because each of those three factors depend on the other two factors in order to be profitable, this change will only come about as a slow spiral of support, starting out small and slowly growing.
We are still totally dependent on petroleum. The petro companies will continue to make money on short-term volatility. We will only start to change to a non-petroleum economy when the general public percieves that it is *certain* that petroluem will only get more scarce in the future. Then, they might consider buying a flex fuel vehicle next year, provided they have seen enough E85 pumps at the gas station on their way hom from work.
Re:Worrisome? (Score:5, Insightful)
Because we're not running out of oil, yet. Besides, North Korea doesn't have oil, and probably couldn't nuke any of the serious oil exporters from there. Oil prices are not psychic, they have nothing to do with the future beyond what people perceive the future to be, and apparently they're perceiving the future the same way the EIA does.
Perhaps you're right, perhaps the authors are biased. It could be that the numbers they used are biased, intentionally or unintentionally. Controlling that perception is what controls the prices, so the participants certainly have a good stake in this. (I wonder what the US government's bias on oil prices would be...)
Still, if I had a penny for every person who thinks that we'll just "find more oil" when what we have now runs out, I'd have enough money to buy a metal detector powerful enough to find the pirate treasure buried in my front yard. Because it's gotta be there, I just need a bigger, better, and more expensive detector to find it.
World population will be 6x10^9 by the year 2000.. (Score:2)
You can always rely on good old progress.
Re:World population will be 6x10^9 by the year 200 (Score:5, Insightful)
As it turns out, the population has grown as predicted, but progress managed to keep up.
Re:World population will be 6x10^9 by the year 200 (Score:5, Insightful)
And how do we produce all that food? With petroleum-based fertilizers. We're using a finite resources that's getting harder and harder to come by to feed an exponentially growing number of people.
This topic always has people saying, "There's always been a fix for this kind of problem. We'll find the next one when we need it." OK, probably we will next time. And the next time. But if we keep pushing our luck, we're going to come up dry one of these days.
Now, I'm willing to do that feed people. But to indulge people's SUV habit? Uh uh.
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I say that if our luck consistently doesn't run out, after a while it's not really luck anymore, is it?
We don't say the cheetah is "lucky" because it's able to run so fast. We don't say the albatross is "lucky" because it's able to fly so far. Why should we say that it's "luck" that humans are naturally adaptive to changing conditions?
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Dude, cheetahs will go extinct in our lifetime. They were doing fine as long as there were plenty of gazelles to eat. But soon, no more gazelles. And no more oil.
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Right, and in between we had the Dark Ages. If you had told the Romans that their civilization was about to collapse, but not to worry because after a thousand years of wretched barbary and ignorance that a new enlightened civilization would arise, do you think they wouldn't have worried?
If this kind of adaptability and survivability showed up once or twice, I'd ca
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I don't mean "do you recycle?"; I mean, "do you commit a majority of your personal time, energy, and wealth resources every day to solving the problem you describe?"
See, my theory is that real problems get solved in short order. Unreal problems, on the other hand, get a lot of lip-service from a lot of people who aren't really serious about sol
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But my complaint is more along the lines of contrasting
"If current trends continue, the situation will become dire"
with
"It's likely that current trends won't continue, which makes predicting the future situation very difficult, but history tells us the chances are, if it does get dire, it'll be because of something catastrophic and unpredictable, not something as simplisti
I'm not worried. (Score:2, Funny)
http://vancouvercondo.info [vancouvercondo.info]
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Re:I'm not worried - Bio-diesel (Score:3, Informative)
Brutal Graph (Score:5, Insightful)
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Not necessarily. You assume that extraction from the oil sands is a near-instantaneous process (it's not), you assume that upscaling production from these reserves is near-instantaneous (it's not, think about the infrastructure required)), you assume that Canada and Canadian firms will choose to export more (when these massive reserves could serve them better if they hold off on exploiting them).
I'm not sayin
Re:Brutal Graph (Score:5, Informative)
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Take your complaints about the environment to Exxon-Mobil. There's a company to go after. They're still funding astroturf campaigns denying that global warming is real. Of course, at the same time, a high ranking member of NCAR tells me, their people p
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Not enough to make much difference on the broad scale, although the Canadians might be helped a little.
Net energy profit = economically viable (Score:2)
The issue is can it be done at a net energy profit.
I'd be more optimistic if we were looking for ways to turn hudson's bay into a hydroelectric site to run the pumps.
That graph is one of the reasons I've held off on having kids. You better hope those guys at Steorn [steorn.com] have something. Or sometime, between now and ~2030, someone comes up with something similar. Or makes fusion work. Or we're all toast.
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Question (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Question (Score:4, Insightful)
That's not so unpalatable, is it?
The problem is that foreign oil dependency is an abstract that most voters care very, very little about. Instead, we're focused on who gets a blowjob or who IMs a 16-year-old or who is a coward or who took a bribe for political activity.
I'm not saying that these are irrelevant issues, but issues like them garner 99% of public attention, leaving precious little room for non-immediate concerns.
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Why is it that you can get 400,000 people to give their lives for their country, but god forbid you ask them to use less energy.
News? (Score:3, Interesting)
What could possibly be more credible than that?
I have a story from the Sony web site saying the PS3 "rules". I guess I should have submitted it.
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no, that's not quite right... (Score:5, Informative)
In other words, we're not your daddy's peak oil site. Read the site at least a bit (and know what you're talking about) before you spout off like that, eh?
It's sad to say but.... (Score:3, Insightful)
It's a dangerous connection, I fear that the consequence of this becomming a political point of contention is that nothing will happen until the damage is done. Then both sides will likely blame each other.
I'm planning on purchasing a copy of "An Inconvenient Truth" and hiding it away for awhile. Either way, it will be interesting to see it again when
Reading the site... (Score:3, Insightful)
Okay, will do. From the site [theoildrum.com]:
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Oh, I don't know... maybe a different chart that actually shows Iraq's operations back in place sometime between now and 2020, since it's NOT ON THE CHART AT ALL. Or, perhaps something that takes into account the big new puddle they just found in the Gulf of Mexico? Prop. O. Ganda.
Silver (Score:5, Interesting)
If anyone cares, the world is destined to run out of raw silver reserves long, long before it runs out of oil. Dozens of analysts are expecting a COMEX default on silver futures within the next couple years. It might not seem like a big deal, but just watch what happens to the price of silver when it does...
(Silver is used in tons of medical equipment. There's a lot of nanotechnology research being done to develop a good substitute, but its still years off)
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Re:Silver (Score:4, Informative)
http://news.silverseek.com/TedButler/1160149628.p
eh?! (Score:2)
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When they run out of oil, it is an abrupt drop in output.
This makes it very hard to do any predictions, whereas in the past, they could assume a gradual decline in output.
Who is FSU? (Score:2)
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Re:Who is FSU? (Score:4, Informative)
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Looking at this graph, one has to wonder... (Score:2)
I'm not attempting to dismiss the issues with using non-reusable fuels or the need for alternatives (both in terms of supply, and environmental reasons) but the fact that we have a fairly complex, somewhat erratic graph with a general increase, but with some steady periods and some occasional (fairly dramatic) dips over the 40 years of "real" data,
Peaking.. now? (Score:2, Interesting)
Does that strike anyone else as somewhat.. skeptical?
They basically project that what we're getting *RIGHT NOW* is the most we'll ever get. Considering that oil production has basically been increasing for the past 20 years (graph [picodopetroleo.net]), that's some leap to make.
Re:Peaking.. now? - Other skepticisms (Score:3, Interesting)
"Money Graph" messed up... (Score:2, Interesting)
We'll live (Score:2)
"We lived for thousands of years before Oil, and we'll live for thousands of years after oil; just not quite the same."
Yes, without being in transition to a full replacement for oil when we run out (of economically priced oil) we'll have a tough time. Probably be riots, war, social collapses. But as a species, we'll survive. And today, international cooperation has given me hope that alot more of us and our count
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Not only that, but we already have a solution to the urban transportation problem [segway.com]!
Clearly, this signals the end of the World (Score:3, Funny)
Oil FUD (Score:4, Interesting)
As Sowell [wikipedia.org] would say [amazon.com], there is not a shortage of oil - there is only a shortage of oil at today's prices.
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DING DING DING we have a winner!
When oil was $15/barrel, US and Canadian production was forecasted to go into a very steep decline. Once oil got to $50, suddenly oilsands and whole lot of other non-conventional sources became viable on a large scale. Not enough to make up for everyone else's declines, but a lot.
Yes, it's expensive. VERY expensive. But we've hardly scraped the surface (figuratively and literally) of the oilsand
Economics FUD (Score:2)
We now know that's wrong. The increase in prices from $20/bbl to $60/bbl only produced a modest increment in supply, and very little of that increase is from new sources. It surprises economists how inelastic oil supply is is, but it doesn't surprise geologists. Read Deffeyes. There is no remaining "long tail" in oil. Once there was, but we're in the tail already. The easy fields were pumped out years ago. There's never been another Spindletop, at 80,000bbl/day from one well, back in 1900. The US average
If they want people to read their report... (Score:3, Informative)
News to Nerds (Score:2)
The End Is Nigh (Score:3, Insightful)
If maybe these studies showed We Hit Peak Oil Three Years Ago And Now We See A Definite Downward Trend, or even We Will Hit Peak Oil In About Ten Years, Give Or Take, then there may be something to it, but this Hey, Peak Oil Is Right Now, We Swear stuff just sets off my We Really Don't Know When The Fuck Peak Oil Will Be alarm.
Selection bias? (Score:5, Funny)
Well, isn't that the point?
I mean, I took temperature measurements from 5 different hours this morning and got the following results:
5am = 35 F
6am = 40 F
7am = 45 F
8am = 50 F
9am = 55 F
By midnight, trends indicate it's going to be around 130 degrees F! I need to post this on the intarweb, so everyone will know that the sky is indeed falling. My conservative projections prove it.
World oil exports? (Score:5, Funny)
I'd worry far more about the oil we use on-planet.
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Copper, Nickel, Gold and Silver on the other hand, could potentially go nuts. Gold is pretty heavily manipulated, just like oil, so its not as transparent as silver. Silver, IMHO will be the metal of the 21st century.
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There are 4 times more cars on the roads in Los angels, but only half the pollution.
Most of that pollution is caused by the reamining older cars.